


Sleep?  What's That? (Whumptober 2020 -- 12, 13, 23)

by radioshack84



Category: Magnum P.I. (TV 2018)
Genre: Episode Related, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:47:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27018295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radioshack84/pseuds/radioshack84
Summary: Hit by a car, kidnapped, sleep-deprived, stranded at sea...Magnum would really like this case to be over now.  Missing scene from 1x07 “The Cat Who Cried Wolf”...because it's Whumptober, and apparently one story related to this episode wasn't enough!
Relationships: Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV & Orville Wilbur Richard "Rick" Wright
Comments: 7
Kudos: 56





	Sleep?  What's That? (Whumptober 2020 -- 12, 13, 23)

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: If parts of this seem vaguely familiar, it's because it started off as a portion of my story "Nine-Lives Syndrome". It later decided it wanted to stand on its own and became this.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own Magnum, PI. Written for enjoyment, not money.

Rick knew three certainties in life. The first two -- death and taxes -- everyone dealt with assuming they weren’t vampires stashing their cash in offshore accounts. The third certainty was unique to his and TC’s lives: Thomas Magnum getting himself into trouble. When TC had called saying Thomas had been kidnapped, Rick had naturally rushed to Island Hoppers to aid in the search. He’d also resigned himself to another long night of worrying about his friend, and worry he had. For hours and hours, all he saw through his binoculars were bleak dark waves beneath the chopper’s harsh spotlight, not even debris to help narrow the search. They combed the ocean until dawn, but the brightening sky and water did little for the terrible hollow feeling that had settled in his chest.

Then, just as the helicopter’s low fuel alarm began blaring, driving the stake a little deeper (yep, he really needed to stop watching vampire B-movies), a tiny yellow raft appeared from nowhere. The relief Rick felt in that moment lasted for about as long as it took him to give a report to Detective Katsumoto over the radio, grab the first aid kit, and swim out to the raft. When he climbed aboard and got a good look at Magnum, though, he was instantly reminded that finding his friend alive was only ever half the battle. Getting him home in one piece frequently proved more difficult, especially if Thomas was already in survival mode, which seemed likely from his demeanor. He was pale and much quieter than normal, offering no conversation or reaction beyond a one-word confirmation that he was all right, despite multiple attempts from Rick to get him talking as he cleaned the laceration over his eye. 

It was unsettling, and something Wright had seen too many times before: they’d bail Magnum out of his ordeal-of-the-week and he’d say he was fine no matter his actual condition, because at some point he’d convinced himself that he _was_ fine in order to keep going. He’d gotten so good at it during their captivity, in fact, that it had become a sort of self-hypnosis -- Magnum could honestly trick himself into believing that an injury he’d sustained didn’t exist. Those were the particularly dangerous occasions, because unless the wound was painful enough to break through the mental box he’d locked it in, Thomas would just ignore it entirely and continue full speed ahead until he collapsed.

It didn’t always happen that way, though, Rick reminded himself. Simple exhaustion was another possible cause for Magnum’s lack of communication. The man had already spent an entire night on a stakeout before being kidnapped, and then had been forced to spend another sleepless night on a raft in the open ocean with said kidnapper. Anyone else would have passed out by now, so he decided to let his taciturn friend be for a few minutes and directed his attention to Nadella, who was much more talkative, even if all he had to say was, “Blah, blah, blah, complain, complain, it was just a kidnapping, he didn’t have to shoot me!”

_What_ was that, now? Unsure (and yet completely sure) that he’d heard correctly, Rick raised an incredulous eyebrow, but wisely chose not to take the bait as he checked the man’s leg. (If he was a bit rougher than necessary in his examination, though, sue him.)

He glanced again at Magnum while packing up the kit, and saw that Thomas was still lounging quietly on the opposite side of the raft, staring out at the horizon. He hadn’t been a moment ago, though. Rick’s hand bumped a small plastic bottle that had somehow gotten halfway out of the zippered pocket it resided in and he narrowed his eyes suspiciously. A discreet check of the contents revealed both good and bad news. One tablet was missing, so at least Magnum was pain-aware and not in full survival mode. He’d gone for the hydrocodone rather than the Tylenol, though, which meant he was injured more significantly than just the cut on his face.

Distracted by the low rumble of a boat motor, Rick gave up his attempt to surmise the nature of the injury and turned to see a small rescue craft speeding toward them in advance of the Coast Guard cutter. “Need a lift?” one of its two crewmen called as they drew alongside the raft.

Those three words seemed to have more effect than any so far that day: Magnum muttered a quick but heartfelt thank-you and was out of the raft before Rick could even offer assistance. It was obvious what the answer would have been anyway, as Magnum waved off the hand that was extended to him by the other crewman and hoisted himself aboard the boat without a backward glance. His hasty escape from his kidnapper’s presence came at a price, though. Rick found Thomas strapped into a seat at the rear of the vessel, as far as he could possibly get from Nadella, eyes closed, skin ashen. The quick run across the choppy water exacerbated his condition and by the time they were hauled aboard the stern of the cutter he was shaking with pain, arms locked tightly around his ribs. He managed to stiffly unfold one of them when he noticed he was being watched, but could do nothing about the grimace on his face.

“Idiot,” Rick scolded mildly, and moved to help him unfasten his seat harness.

Suddenly, Magnum’s eyes widened in alarm. “Look out!” he rasped.

Rick turned just in time to see a mass of flailing limbs headed toward him on a collision course before he was knocked to the deck. Nadella, owner of half of the limbs, let out a growl of frustration, but persisted in his attempt to wrestle a utility knife away from one of the crewmen. What was _with_ that guy? Sure, he had fifty pounds of advantage over his opponent, and the other crewman had already disembarked to secure the boat, but escape was still an unlikely prospect at best.

A glint of metal caught Rick’s eye, and the knife went flying overboard. That should have been the end of it, but Nadella changed course, evidently deciding to see if he could shove the crewman off the rear of the boat and back down the launch ramp. He might have succeeded, too, had he not literally just drug another person into the fight. Dodging an errant fist, Wright decided he’d finally had it with Carl Nadella. “Hey, knock it off!” he shouted, and grabbed the kidnapper’s injured leg, pinning it firmly against the deck with his knee. 

Nadella howled in pain and instantly let go of the crewman, taking a blind swing at Rick. He missed, and promptly found his wrists being bound with zip-ties by a very annoyed crewman. “Give me a hand getting him aboard?” the crewman asked Rick after double-checking that the restraints would hold.

Rick really wanted to say no -- where the hell was Katsumoto, the FBI, or the rest of the _crew_? -- but Nadella was still struggling and Thomas was standing up against all odds and good sense, so Rick figured the quickest and safest option for everyone involved was to just agree. It was the right decision until Nadella was settled on a stretcher and had whined his way into being dosed heavily with painkillers. At that point, Rick wound up trying to fill in the blanks of what had happened for Petty Officer Evan Flores, the cutter’s medic, who for some unknown reason assumed he was well-acquainted with Nadella’s medical history.

Every time Rick glanced over his shoulder to check on Magnum, Flores thought of another piece of information he needed. Blood type, medication allergies, family history of high blood pressure for Pete’s sake! It was almost as if he were doing it on purpose…

Deciding to test that theory, Rick looked back again and frowned. Thomas was just barely keeping pace behind them, eyes cast downward, arm pressed tightly to his right side.

“Does Mr. Nadella use blood thinners?”

Aha! Rick faced forward with his hands on his hips and narrowed his eyes at Flores, who conceded the game with a chuckle. “Sorry, sir. You’re looking as tense as a coiled spring. I thought a distraction might help, although I was beginning to wonder if you were going to deck me before you noticed I was messing with you.”

Rick tilted his head to one side and eyed the other man curiously. “You get decked a lot, don't you?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny.”

Rick snorted, smiling in spite of himself.

“And there it is.” Flores grinned back, then grew serious as he looked past Rick to Magnum. “Is he always like this?”

“Like what?”

“Determined. Rib injuries can hurt like hell.” They rounded a final turn, and Flores steered Nadella’s gurney into the small medical bay, coming to a stop in the corner.

“I think pigheaded is the term you’re looking for,” Rick said, waiting at the doorway as Magnum caught up. “Isn’t that right, TM?”

No response. Rick wasn’t even sure he’d been heard. Thomas stopped walking and leaned heavily against the opposite side of the doorframe, clinging to it with the hand that wasn’t clutching his side. His eyes remained fixed on the floor. “Hey, Tommy, you doing okay?”

Magnum seemed to snap out of his daze a little when Rick touched his arm, and he nodded, but his grip on the doorframe only tightened.

“How about letting me be the judge of that?” Flores said, completing a cursory exam of the now-sleeping Nadella and turning his attention to the PI.

“What?” Magnum rasped, looking at the unfamiliar man with confusion.

The medic briefly introduced himself. “You’re awfully pale, sir. Why don’t you have a seat? The ride back will take at least an hour. You can rest here until then.”

Thomas stared blankly at the empty bed a few feet away, then glanced over his shoulder when someone called his name. “Glad you’re back,” Detective Katsumoto said from the corridor. “I’ve got the FBI and HPD on a conference call across the way. They need your statement.”

“Now?” Magnum asked tiredly when his brain finally got around to processing the detective’s words. 

“Why not? It’ll only take a minute.”

It _never_ just took a minute, and Magnum wanted to refer Gordon to Flores for the ‘why not?’ part, but if broken ribs hadn’t mattered to the detective then the fact that Magnum was now running on substantially less than fumes probably wouldn’t either. Katsumoto was frowning at him and looked even more annoyed than he had the day before, no doubt because he’d just spent the night searching for a murderer and a PI whom he held in only slightly higher regard, and Thomas decided then that it might be in his best interest to get the statement over with.

Unfortunately, his equilibrium failed the moment he turned to follow Katsumoto. His legs did their best to fold beneath him and his knuckles went white on the doorframe in a desperate bid to stay upright. If Rick hadn’t lunged and grabbed his elbow, he’d have dropped faster than a sack of bricks. Even with his friend’s support, Magnum found himself struggling to lock his knees.

“Is he all right?” he heard Katsumoto say.

“Does he look all right?” Rick replied testily.

“To be determined,” Flores said at the same time from his opposite side. “I’m just going to get a pulse, sir.”

Magnum wobbled as the medic pried his fingers away from the door, and instinctively reached for the wall with his other hand for balance, letting out a strangled yelp as his ribs pulled.

“Okay, now I’m insisting,” Flores said. “Come on, off your feet.” The medic nodded to Rick, and they took Magnum’s weight between them, all but carrying him to the bed. Thomas immediately tensed as they lowered him onto his back, weakly grabbing Rick’s arm.

“Side,” he ground out, trying to use his friend for leverage to roll himself.

“Slowly,” Flores cautioned, slipping a hand under Magnum’s shoulder as Rick took his arm, and together they assisted the injured man in turning onto his left side.

“Better?” Rick asked. Thomas gave a small nod, but his breaths remained short and harsh, his hand still clenching the fabric of his friend’s shirt sleeve. Rick glanced up and found Katsumoto staring at Magnum, an expression of honest concern on his face. That’s when Wright got really worried. “What is it?”

The detective sighed and gave him a look that was almost...apologetic? “I’m guessing you don’t know that Magnum was hit by a car yesterday. He has three broken ribs.”

“I’m sorry, I thought you just said he got hit by a _car_ yesterday,” Rick said, gaping at Katsumoto in disbelief.

The detective nodded. “That’s right. It happened while he and Higgins were chasing Nadella from the house where Agent Francis was murdered.”

“So, what, you all decided to go on after that as though nothing had happened?”

“Magnum and Higgins found a dead body. I couldn’t just disregard that, and he seemed fine by the time the hospital discharged him.”

“Tommy _always_ seems fine. It’s his superpower,” Rick huffed in irritation. “He once had a broken collarbone and two bullet wounds and we didn’t know a thing about it until he dropped over nine miles into an eleven mile exfil!”

Magnum heard his friend’s voice rise in volume, and under different circumstances he would have appreciated Rick telling off Katsumoto, but his muscles were leaden and aching with exhaustion and his ribs were hurting nearly enough to rival the collarbone incident, making everything else seem unimportant.

“Try to slow your breathing, sir.”

The medic’s voice was close, momentarily drowning out the sound of Rick and Katsumoto’s sniping, and Magnum realized how abbreviated and painful his breaths had become just as his chest seized and he started coughing, which turned almost immediately into gasping. Something was quickly placed over his nose and mouth, and he tried to pull away, but it followed him, cool air brushing against his skin.

“Take it easy, sir. That’s just a little oxygen. I need you to take as deep of a breath as you can for me, all right? Good. Again. One more…”

Thomas didn’t black out, which led him to believe he was succeeding in following the half-heard instructions, but several agonizing minutes of breathing gained him little except a reduction in the darkness at the edges of his vision. The pain absolutely refused to recede, and Magnum couldn’t bring himself to care when he lost his second shirt in as many days, this one to the medic’s scissors. The bandages were cut away as well, and then came more commands from Flores to breathe, each one punctuated by a small, cool object pressing gently against his flank. That sensation gave way to a warm hand squeezing his arm, and he blinked, managing with difficulty to focus on the blurry form of the medic standing over him.

Flores smiled sympathetically. “Nothing’s been displaced or punctured from your previous injury. You’re going to be fine, but we’ll keep you on the O2 for a bit longer. It’s helping, even if it doesn’t feel like it.”

Magnum nodded carefully and the medic stepped away, revealing another blurred shape that resolved into a familiar face.

“Hey, there he is,” Rick said, grinning at him from a nearby chair.

“H-hey,” Thomas rasped, and immediately wished he hadn’t. His arms snaked back around his ribs protectively and he curled up as much as he dared. “Don’t feel so good,” he whispered.

“I know, bud. Flores is going to set you up with some fluids and morphine here in a minute. You’ll probably sleep until we get to the hospital.”

“Sleep?”

Rick couldn’t help but chuckle at Magnum’s bewildered expression. “Yeah, Tommy. Sleep. You know, that thing you haven’t done for a couple of days?”

“Can’t,” Magnum said, shaking his head. An involuntary tremor rippled through his body, then another, and he moaned softly, biting his lip beneath the oxygen mask as the shivering jostled him a little too much.

“Why’s that?” Rick asked, grabbing an extra blanket off of a nearby cart and tucking it around his friend. Thomas didn’t answer, but it was hard to miss the way his gaze sharpened warily and shifted to Carl Nadella. “Listen, brother,” Rick said, lowering his voice and repositioning his chair so he was between Magnum and his kidnapper. “I know you know this, but you’re a little worn out right now so I’m going to remind you anyway: you’re not on that raft anymore. We found you, you’re safe, and I’ve got your six. So does Katsumoto, as much as I hate to admit it. So if you want to sleep, you can go ahead and sleep, all right?”

Rick waited until Magnum nodded reluctantly, then shifted his chair back to its original position, knowing that his friend would still want the option to keep an eye on Nadella. When Thomas made no attempt to close his eyes after several minutes had passed, though, Rick scooted closer and rested one arm on the bed next to him, drumming his fingers absently on the mattress. Before long, he felt Magnum’s knee press against his elbow, and by the time Flores returned with the promised morphine, Thomas was sound asleep.


End file.
